Jewish Peace News (JPN) is an information service that circulates news clippings, analyses, editorial commentary, and action alerts concerning the Israel / Palestine conflict. We work to promote a just resolution to the conflict; we believe that the cause of both peace and justice will be served when Israel ends the occupation, withdrawing completely from the Palestinian territories and finding a solution to the Palestinian refugee crisis within the framework of international law.

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

In the time since Jonathan Pollack, himself one of the most steadfast Israeli activists working in solidarity with Palestinians, wrote the article below, Jamal Juma', the director of the Stop the Wall, a Palestinian grassroots organization, has also been detained (see http://stopthewall.org/latestnews/2140.shtml for news updates and actions).

Activists like Jamal Juma', Mohammad Othman, and Abdallah Abu Ramah, to name just a few, inspire international campaigns for their release. But just in the last six months, 31 residents of Bil'in have been arrested, mostly during nighttime raids, and 89 have been arrested in Ni'ilin in the last 18 months. These two villages are two of the main hubs of unarmed protest against the Wall.

As Pollack notes, there seems to be a stepped up campaign on the part of Israel to target grassroots activists that is very disturbing.

On a pitch black early December night, seven armored Israeli military jeeps pulled into the driveway of a home in the West Bank town of Ramallah. Dozens of soldiers, armed and possibly very scared, came to arrest someone they were probably told was a dangerous, wanted man - Abdallah Abu Rahmah, a high school teacher at the Latin Patriarchate School and a well-known grassroots organizer in the village of Bil'in.

Every Friday, for the past five years, Abdallah Abu Rahmah has led men, women and children from Bil'in, carrying signs and Palestinian flags, along with their Israeli and international supporters, in civil disobedience and protest marches against the seizure of sixty percent of the village's land for Israel's construction of its wall and settlements. Bil'in has become a symbol of civilian resistance to Israel's occupation for Palestinians and international grassroots.Abu Rahmah was taken from his bed, his hands bound with tight zip tie cuffs whose marks were still visible a week later, and his eyes blindfolded. A few hours later, as President Obama spoke of "the men and women around the world who have been jailed and beaten in the pursuit of justice" upon receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, Abu Rahmah's blindfold was removed as he found himself in a military detention center. He was being interrogated about the crime of organizing demonstrations. In occupied Palestinian territories, Abu Rahmah's case is not unusual - about 8,000 Palestinians currently inhabit Israeli jails on political grounds.

After more than fifteen years of fruitless negotiations, which have done nothing more than allow Israel to further cement its control over the West Bank, even the moderate and mainstream West Bank Palestinian Authority now refuses negotiations with Israel. Despairing over the futility of perpetual negotiations, figures like Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and West Bank Prime Minister Salam Fayyad are openly supporting a resumption of the strategies of the first Palestinian Intifada. This being a grassroots uprising, saying "Those who have to resist are the people [...] like in Bil'in and Ni'ilin, where people are injured every day."

Yet, Israel's occupation, like any other military operation, speaks only the language of violence and brutality when dealing with Palestinians, whether facing armed militants or unarmed protesters.Fearing a paradigm shift to grassroots resistance, Israel reacted in the only way it knows - with violence and repression. And what places could better serve as an example than the symbols of contemporary Palestinian popular struggle - Bil'in and the neighboring village of Ni'ilin, villages where weekly demonstrations are held against the Wall, with the support of Israeli and international activists?Israel's desire to quash the popular resistance movement is no hidden agenda, nor should it come as a surprise. Recent acts by the Israeli army point directly to this goal.

Over the past six months, 31 Bil'in residents have been arrested, including almost all the members of the Popular Committee that organizes the demonstrations. A similar tactic is being used against protesters in the neighboring village of Ni'ilin, which is losing over half of its land to Israel's wall and settlements. Over the past eighteen months, 89 Ni'ilin residents have been arrested.

Israeli lawyer Gaby Lasky, who represents many of Bil'in and Ni'ilin's detainees, was informed by Israel's military prosecutors that the army had decided to end demonstrations against the Wall, and that it intends to use legal procedures to do so.

The Israeli army also recently resumed the use of 22 caliber sniper fire for dispersing demonstrations, though use of the weapon for crowd control purposes was specifically forbidden in 2001 by the Israeli army's legal arm. Following the killing of unarmed demonstrator Aqel Srour in Ni'ilin last June, Brigadier General Avichai Mandelblit, the Israeli army's Judge Advocate General, reiterated the ban on the use of .22 caliber bullets against demonstrators, to no effect. In addition to Srour, since the beginning of 2009, 28 unarmed demonstrators were injured by live ammunition sniper fire in Ni'ilin alone.Unlike the battlefield, in the realm of public opinion, where political struggles are decided, gun-toting soldiers cannot defeat a civilian uprising. Israel is clearly aware of this fact. The night raids on the villages, detention of leadership and shear brutality on the ground are all a desperate and failing attempt to nip the renewed wave of popular resistance in the bud.

We are determined to break the siege. We all will continue to do whatever we can to make it happen

Using the pretext of escalating tensions on the Gaza-Egypt border, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry informed us yesterday that the Rafah border will be closed over the coming weeks, into January. We responded that there is always tension at the border because of the siege, that we do not feel threatened, and that if there are any risks, they are risks we are willing to take. We also said that it was too late for over 1,300 delegates coming from over 42 countries to change their plans now. We both agreed to continue our exchanges.

Although we consider this as a setback, it is something we've encountered -and overcome- before. No delegation, large or small, that entered Gaza over the past 12 months has ever received a final OK before arriving at the Rafah border. Most delegations were discouraged from even heading out of Cairo to Rafah. Some had their buses stopped on the way. Some have been told outright that they could not go into Gaza. But after public and political pressure, the Egyptian government changed its position and let them pass.

Our efforts and plans will not be altered at this point. We have set out to break the siege of Gaza and march on December 31 against the Israeli blockade. We are continuing in the same direction.

Egyptian embassies and missions all over the world must hear from us and our supporters (by phone, fax and email)** over the coming crucial days, with a clear message: Let the international delegation enter Gaza and let the Gaza Freedom March proceed.

I am writing/calling to express my full support for the December 31, 2009 Gaza Freedom March. I urge the Egyptian government to allow the 1,300 international delegates to enter the Gaza Strip through Egypt.

The aim of the march is to call on Israel to lift the siege. The delegates will also take in badly needed medical aid, as well as school supplies and winter jackets for the children of Gaza.

Thursday, December 17, 2009

The extravagant fundraiser for Jewish settlers in Hebron held in the New York Mets' Citi Field on November 21 by the Hebron Fund is not a unique example of US tax-exempt institutions' support for the most extreme of the settlers and their explicitly racist projects. Over $33 million was sent to such projects from 2004 to 2007. In 2007 and 2008 the "Od Yosef Chai" yeshiva (religious seminary) in Yitzhar near Nablus, whose rabbi proclaimed that it is permissible to kill non-Jewish babies and indeed anyone whose speech "weakens our kingdom," received NIS 102,547 (about $27,130) from the US tax-exempt Central Fund of Israel. Other recipients of tax-exempt funds include Ateret Cohanim and El Ad (The City of David) which, for years, have been aggressively expanding the settler presence in the Old City of Jerusalem and the nearby village of Silwan. The bogus 10-month freeze on settlement construction does not begin to address the growing cancerous power of such institutionsin the West Bank and all of Israeli society. – Joel Beinin

The White House condemns the torching of a mosque, yet respectable Americans contribute to a yeshiva whose rabbi said it's okay to kill gentile babies. It is no surprise that the American administration tacitly, if unenthusiastically, accepted the excuse that the map of national priority zones the cabinet approved on Sunday does not violate the decision to freeze construction in the settlements.

How can President Barack Obama object to furthering education in a settlement like Yitzhar, located in the heart of the West Bank? After all, his own tax revenues contribute to the flourishing of the Od Yosef Chai Shechem [Nablus] yeshiva, the settlement's crowning glory.

This is the same yeshiva whose rabbi said it is permissible to kill gentile babies because of "the future danger that will arise if they are allowed to grow into evil people like their parents." In his latest book, the head of the yeshiva, Yitzhak Shapira, who bears the honorable title of rabbi, even permits killing anyone "who, through his remarks and so forth, weakens our kingdom" (Obama, beware!).

On November 17, this column reported that the Education Ministry's division of Torah institutions transferred more than NIS 1 million to this yeshiva in 2006 and 2007. The Welfare Ministry made do with a mere NIS 150,000.

A report on donations submitted by the yeshiva to the registrar of nonprofit organizations revealed that the American public also participates in financing the message coming out of Yitzhar. It states that in 2007 and 2008, the yeshiva received NIS 102,547 from an American foundation known as the Central Fund of Israel.

The American investigative reporter Philip Weiss says on his web site (mondoweiss.net) that money given to this fund is considered a tax-deductible donation. That means the thousands of shekels the fund sent to the settlement of Yitzhar were deducted from the donors' annual tax payments to the American treasury.

According to the fund's latest financial statement, it gave some $8 million to religious organizations in 2006, earmarked for establishing synagogues and schools, aiding the needy and "urgent security needs."

The fund's headquarters are located on the third floor of the Marcus Brothers Textiles store on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan. Its director is Jay Marcus, a resident of the settlement of Efrat.

His mother, Hadassah, is the fund's president and his father, Arthur, is vice president. Both parents live in New York.

The Washington Post's David Ignatius recently reported that according to statements filed with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, funds like that of the Marcus family sent some $33.4 million, tax free, to organizations affiliated with the settlements in 2004-07.

'Large forces, extensive damage'

So the next time the White House spokesman condemns the torching of a mosque near Nablus, some reporter ought to ask him why respectable American citizens contribute to the Od Yosef Chai Shechem yeshiva, one of whose leading rabbis wrote the following incendiary words of incitement: "[Civil] Administration inspectors have not dared to enter Yitzhar since the freeze edict. Their experience with Yitzhar, and its heat, are responsible for the fact that every entry into the settlement by hostile elements requires large forces and ends with extensive damage to army and police equipment, even greater damage to Arab persons and property, and a region that continues to burn in every direction for several days" (Rabbi Yosef Elitzur, Hakol Hayehudi, December 4, 2009).

At the same time, U.S. officials could consider how a tax exemption for donors to Friends of Ateret Cohanim and The City of David jibes with official American policy regarding the presence of right-wing Jewish organizations in the heart of Palestinian neighborhoods in Jerusalem's Holy Basin.

Human rights organizations and Jewish peace activists in the United States have started giving information to the authorities about foundations that support dubious right-wing organizations in Israel. They are asking why the administration only shuts down funds that send charitable donations to associations affiliated with Hamas.

Sunday, December 13, 2009

The four items below all touch on the sidelined, yet crucial and smoldering predicament of Palestine's refugees.

The first item reports on a joint call from Christian Palestinian leaders to churches around the world to join the movement for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel led by Palestinian civil society organizations. It notes that this call or Kairos, "an ancient Greek term meaning the right or opportune moment … inspired by the liberation theology, especially in South Africa where a similar document was issued," is being made sixty-one years to the day after December 11th 1948, the date of "the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194 … calling for the return of the Palestinian refugees to their homes of origin 'at the earliest practicable date.'"

The second item is a brief interview, "without diplomatic kid gloves," as journalist Akiva Eldar put it, with Karen Koning AbuZayd, the departing deputy commissioner of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). "It is particularly vexing," AbuZayd noted, "that the prevailing approach fails - or refuses - to accord the refugee issue the attention it deserves. Over 60 years, dispossession has faded from the focus of peace efforts. The heart of where peace should begin is absent from the international agenda, pushed aside …" She went on to emphasize that "not a single conflict of contemporary times has been resolved, no durable peace achieved unless and until the voices of the victims of those conflicts were heard, their losses acknowledged and redress found …"

Today as well, Israel's dispossession of Palestinians is ongoing. As AbuZayd observed, "forced displacements continue across the West Bank [… and] Palestinians are evicted from their homes in East Jersualem." She continued, "I ask a simple question. Is it not time for those engaged in the peace process to muster the will and the courage to address the Palestine refugee question?"

Meanwhile, some of the Palestinian and Israeli activists striving to place this question precisely on the public and government agenda were severely brutalized yesterday afternoon by Israeli police. The third item is an announcement circulated on Saturday, December 12th, 2009, on activist lists in Israel in both Hebrew and English, briefly reporting on events occurring the previous day (Friday, Dec. 11th) in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem, and announcing another protest on Saturday evening.

Finally, this is followed by a report on the protest and arrests from today's Ha'aretz.

Rela Mazali

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BNC Welcomes the */*Kairos*/* Document of Leading Christian Palestinians:

"A moment of truth–A word of faith from the heart of Palestiniansuffering"*

Occupied Palestine: 11 December 2009

Today, prominent Christian Palestinian leaders are releasing a historical /Kairos/ document, calling on Churches around the world "to say a word of truth and to take a position of truth with regard to Israel's occupation of Palestinian land." Unambiguously endorsing boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) as one of the key non-violent forms of solidarity that international faith-based organizations are urged to adopt, the document affirms: "We see boycott and disinvestment as tools of justice, peace and security …"

/Kairos/ is an ancient Greek term meaning the right or opportune moment. The Palestinian /Kairos/ document is inspired by the liberation theology, especially in South Africa where a similar document was issued at a crucial time in the struggle against apartheid. Informed by a lucid vision based on the universal principles of "equality, justice, liberty and respect for pluralism," Palestinian Christians issue this document today to explore a morally sound way out of the "dead end" reached in the Palestinian tragedy, "in which human beings are destroyed."

The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) salutes the moral clarity, courage and principled position conveyed in this new document, which emphasizes that resisting injustice should "concern the Church" and is "a right and a duty for a Christian," adding that it is "a resistance with love as its logic."

The BNC keenly notes the importance of releasing this historical call on this day, December 11^th , which marks the 61^st anniversary of the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194, issued in 1948, calling for the return of the Palestinian refugees to their homes of origin "at the earliest practicable date." Whereas Palestinian refugees are still awaiting their return six decades later, we share the message of hope in today's Palestinian /Kairos/: "One of the most important signs of hope is the perseverance of the generations and the continuity of memory, which does not forget the 'Nakba' (catastrophe) and its significance. This land is our land and it is incumbent upon us to defend it and reclaim it."

Particularly praiseworthy is the /Kairos/'s emphasis on urging all churches to positively respond to the call by Palestinian civil society, including religious institutions, for "a system of economic sanctions and boycott to be applied against Israel," which, the document clarifies, "is not revenge but rather a serious action in order to reach a just and definitive peace."

Early in the second intifada, Karen Koning AbuZayd, then the newly appointed deputy commissioner general of UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) traveled to Rafah, in Gaza, to observe firsthand the situation of Palestinian refugees whose houses had been razed by bulldozers of the Israel Defense Forces. AbuZayd saw an old woman sifting through the ruins. The woman stretched out a hand to the visitor so that she would not trip over the pieces of rubble. According to AbuZayd, who has headed UNRWA since 2005, this was typical Palestinian behavior: They are incredibly patient, she says and notes, with a sigh, that she sometimes even became angry with them because they never raise their voice.

Apparently, no one in the world is as knowledgeable about refugees as AbuZayd, a fair-skinned woman from Chicago who arrived here after having provided shelter to the refugees of the horrible war in the Balkans. Before that, she was busy with the refugee camps in Africa. (AbuZayd is the name of her husband, a Sudanese professor who recently died.) In an interview on the eve of her departure from her post at UNRWA, she speaks as a major advocate of the Palestinian refugees and, for the first time in her career at the United Nations, without diplomatic kid gloves.

"From my perspective as the head of the Agency mandated to assist and protect Palestine refugees," she begins, "it is particularly vexing that the prevailing approach fails - or refuses - to accord the refugee issue the attention it deserves. Over 60 years, dispossession has faded from the focus of peace efforts. The heart of where peace should begin is absent from the international agenda, pushed aside as one of the 'final status' issues, one that belongs to a later stage of the negotiation process. As forced displacements continue across the West Bank, as Palestinians are evicted from their homes in East Jersualem, I ask a simple question. Is it not time for those engaged in the peace process to muster the will and the courage to address the Palestine refugee question?

"Make no mistake, not a single conflict of contemporary times has been resolved, no durable peace achieved unless and until the voices of the victims of those conflicts were heard, their losses acknowledged and redress found to injustices they experience. In addition, it has been a truism of peace making in recent times that all parties to a conflict are given a seat at the negotiating table. Failing to engage with the refugee issue and consciously shunting it to one side has served only to disavow the refugees' significance as a constituency with a prominent stake in delivering and sustaining peace. This has left many with a dangerous cynicism about the peace process, thus strengthening the hands of those who argue against peace itself."

What is unique about the plight of the Palestinian refugees?

"Palestine refugees are unique in the contemporary refugee experience, as they have no state to return to, nor are they allowed to return to their homes. But the Palestinians are also in a unique place for other reasons. The world community talks about reducing and eliminating poverty, and yet in Gaza an occupied people is under extreme trade and economic sanction as a matter of political choice. And in the West Bank the closure regime - part of the military occupation - is leading to the continuing rise in poverty rates.

"The observance of human rights is seen as a given in all peacemaking efforts. Yet Palestinians are being deprived of a full spectrum of human rights - some as a result of deliberate political choice - to an extent unequaled elsewhere. The occupation, now over 40 years old, becomes more entrenched with every infringement of human rights and international law in the occupied Palestinian territory. Political actors hold in their hands the power to redress the travesties Palestinians endure. Yet, the approach has been, at best, to equivocate over the minutiae of the occupation - a checkpoint here, a bag of cement there - or, at worst, to look the other way, to acquiesce in or even support the measures causing Palestinian suffering."

In light of her years of experience working with refugees, does AbyZayd believe that there can be a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli dispute without the implementation of a "right of return" for the Palestinian refugees?

"The right of individuals to return to their country is a fundamental human right found in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination. Resolution 194, adopted in 1948 by the General Assembly, is understood by many jurists and by the refugees as affirming the right of the refugees to choose whether to return to their ancestral homes or receive compensation for lost property. The claim to a right of return continues to constitute part of the refugees' identities and aspirations. UNRWA does not have a mandate to search for durable solutions for the refugees, but I believe that, for a resolution to be sustainable, it will have to be perceived as fair and just by major constituencies, including the refugees. This may very well require that the principle of the right of return be recognized or that other acknowledgments be made in a peaceagreement, but to know for sure, we must talk with the refugees."

AbuZayd is highly critical of both Israel and the international community. What does she have to say about the extent of the solidarity that Arab leaders have expressed with their refugee brothers and sisters?

"In 2009, Arab countries contributed only 1 percent to our regular budget, namely the general fund that covers our basic services, primary education and primary health care, some 70 percent of which is for salaries for our 29,680 staff. This is far short of the 7.8 percent, which is the target set by the Arab League itself 20 years ago.

"But there are some genuine misconceptions in Israel - and elsewhere - about how generous the Arab states have been, especially as far as our emergency programs are concerned. Kuwait's $34 million for the Gaza Emergency Response is one of the largest single donations the Agency has ever received .... The Saudi Committee for the Support of the Palestinian People has pledged over $10 million this year for Gaza, more than most governments, Western or Arab .... The King of Saudi Arabia has pledged $1 billion for the reconstruction of Gaza, and other Gulf leaders have offered similarly large amounts. Much of this is for destroyed or damaged buildings. All that is preventing Arab leaders from being tested on these pledges is the Israeli government's refusal to allow the entry of construction materials into Gaza. It is worth mentioning as well the contribution of the host countries - Jordan, Syria and Lebanon - to infrastructure and services for the refugees."

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Every Friday for the past few weeks, there has been a march to Sheikh Jarrah to protest the eviction of Palestinian residents from their homes. During the demonstration yesterday, the police stormed the crowd with unprecedented force, wounding ten demonstrators and arresting twenty-four. The detainees spent the night in the Russian Compound, and will be brought before a judge to be arraigned this evening. The harsh police response seems planned in advance in order to suppress the mounting protests and to silence the public opposition to the policy of judaizing East Jerusalem. Brutal suppression of legal and nonviolent demonstrations will not silence the opposition.

We will not be silent.We will not stand by while the Sheikh Jarrah residents are evicted and their protest silenced.

Six Israel Police officers were lightly wounded and 21 left-wing activists were arrested Friday during a demonstration that turned violent in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem.

The demonstrators were protesting the eviction of Palestinian families from their homes.

The protesters on Friday marched from the city center to Sheikh Jarrah, where police said they tried to enter a home that is partly occupied by Jews before being stopped.

Police were instructed to disperse the demonstration, but the protesters refused to leave. Police then used force and tear gas to disperse the crowd.

The entry of the Jews into the home follows a court order ruling in early December that the Arab al-Kurd family, which lives in a portion of the house, had no right to occupy an addition that they had built onto the house. The court rejected the al-Kurd family's petition seeking to prevent the Jews from moving into the building.

In recent months, three Palestinian families have been evicted from Sheikh Jarrah homes. Activists accuse settlers of trying to take over 28 homes in the neighborhood, which would allow them to create a Jewish community at the heart of the mostly Arab vicinity.

Friday, December 11, 2009

Israel as "the only democracy in the Middle East" is something one often hears about from Israel apologists.In Israel every adult citizen has the right to vote, or so the story goes.As the article below demonstrates, this isn't always the case.

Some 35,000 Bedouin residents of Israel's southern Negev have been denied the right to hold their first local council election after the Israeli parliament passed a law at the last minute to cancel this month's ballot.

The new law gives the government the power to postpone elections to the regional council, known as Abu Basma, until the interior ministry deems the local Bedouin ready to run their own affairs.

Legal and human rights groups say the move is an unprecedented violation of Israel's constitutional principles. Taleb al-Sana, a Bedouin member of Israel's parliament, has written to its speaker warning that "it is not possible to have democracy without elections."

The vote in Abu Basma was scheduled to take place six years after the council was established under the transitional authority of a panel of mostly Jewish officials appointed by the interior ministry.

Critics say the government changed the law specifically to avoid bolstering the position of the Bedouin residents, who are engaged in a legal battle with the state for the return of ancestral lands confiscated decades ago.

"The Bedouin have a claim on a large area of the Negev and the government wants someone ruling the council who is on its side until the case is settled to the state's advantage," said Thabet Abu Ras, who was head of an empowerment scheme for Abu Basma's residents until 2007.

The residents of Abu Basma are among 90,000 Bedouin in the Negev desert who have been denied any local representation since Israel's founding in 1948. For most of that time the state has refused to recognize any of their villages.

According to officials, the Bedouin are living illegally on state land and must move to a handful of locations in the Negev approved by the government.

Bedouin leaders counter that their villages predate Israel's creation and that the approved locales are so tightly confined that they cannot maintain their traditional pastoral way of life.

Israel has faced mounting criticism for its treatment of the 45 so-called "unrecognized villages." which are denied all public services, including electricity and water. The inhabitants are invariably forced to live in tents or tin shacks because concrete homes are subject to demolition.

Instead, since the 1970s Israel has established a half dozen "townships," to which the Bedouin in the unrecognized villages were expected to relocate. But the townships, whose rates of unemployment and poverty are the highest in the country, have attracted only half of the Negev's 180,000 Bedouin, mostly those without any claim to land.

In what many Bedouin hoped was a change of tack, however, the government of Ariel Sharon launched a plan in 2003 to begin a process of recognizing nine of the larger villages, home to 35,000 Bedouin.

They were grouped into a new regional council called Abu Basma, with the goal of encouraging the inhabitants of the other unrecognized villages to move into its jurisdiction.

Under the regional councils law, the interior ministry was allowed to appoint a panel of officials to oversee local services for four years while the residents prepared to run the authority themselves, said Gil Gan-Mor, a lawyer with the Association of Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI).

He added that the interior ministry then sought, under extraordinary powers, two year-long extensions. But shortly before the deadline for staging elections was reached this month, the government pushed through an amendment to postpone elections indefinitely.

"The interior ministry says the law could be applied to any regional council, but in practice it is clear that this law was drafted with only Abu Basma in mind," he said. "The aim is to continue controlling the lives of the Bedouin, treating them as though they cannot look after themselves."

ACRI and another group, Adalah, a legal center for Israel's Arab minority, will challenge the law in the high court next month.

Alaa Mahajneh, a lawyer with Adalah, said the regional council's current panel was dominated by Jewish officials and headed by Amram Kalaji, a former director general of the interior ministry identified with the right-wing Orthodox religious party Shas.

Abu Ras, a geography professor at Ben Gurion University in Beersheva, said it was impossible to separate the postponement of the elections from the wider issue of Bedouin land claims.

Abu Basma is the only one of 47 regional councils in Israel that does not have territorial continuity, he said. "The council's jurisdiction is restricted to the built-up area of each village and does not include the lands between the villages or the surrounding land. Despite the Bedouin way of life, Abu Basma has not been allocated any agricultural areas."

He added that the chief concern of Israeli officials, although unspoken, was that the Abu Basma region was the only territorial buffer between the West Bank and Gaza. "If there is a Palestinian state, Israel does not want the Bedouin controlling lands that connect those two Palestinian territories. It would rather the Bedouin were concentrated in as small a space as possible."

According to Nili Baruch, an Israeli planner, Abu Basma has been starved of land compared to its Jewish counterparts. Its jurisdiction extends to only 3,400 hectares, making it the most densely populated regional council in the country.

By contrast, the 10 other regional councils in Israel's south -- home to a total of 45,000 Jews -- have jurisdiction over a vast swath of rural land, nearly 1.2 million hectares.

Yeela Ranaan, a lecturer at Sapir College in Sderot and spokeswoman for the Regional Council for the Unrecognized Villages, an unofficial Bedouin advocacy group, said the creation of Abu Basma had been a "partial victory."

Recognition meant those homes of Bedouin living in the center of the villages were no longer under threat of destruction, roads could be paved and schools opened, she said. But the planning process in all the villages was stalled and land claims were not being addressed.

In an apparent vote of no-confidence in Abu Basma, only 7,000 of the 35,000 Bedouin residents have registered with the regional council so far, said Gan-Mor. Shortages of schools and a failure to improve living conditions meant most had chosen to remain enrolled for services with the nearby townships.

The Bedouin's land dispute with the government is over 80,000 hectares. Abu Ras said he believed the government hoped to force an evacuation of all the unrecognized villages over the next three years, forcing the inhabitants into the already confined areas available to Abu Basma.

"Only once there is a settlement in its favor will the government think about elections for the regional council."

Tal Rabina, a spokesman for Abu Basma council, said the criticism that Bedouin rights had been violated by the law change reflected a "political agenda."

"At this stage, when there are still many disputes between villages and families, most of the residents prefer that someone outside the community makes decisions. The current leadership brings a great deal of experience and professionalism to the task."

Monday, December 7, 2009

Didi Remez reports an exchange between a customer and Portland-based Columbia Sportswear, whose Israeli distributor had been running ads in Hebrew and English advertising their clothing as "suitable for active work in various regions, including outposts." Customer Peter Miller wrote to the company explaining that in Israel, "outposts" refers to the most extreme of the settlements which are considered illegal even by the Israeli government. The next day, Columbia Sportswear responded with an email promising to "permanently discontinue" the ad and explaining that the Israeli distributor created the Hebrew text and incorrectly translated it and ran it without clearance from the home office. The Portland office apologized for "the offense inadvertently created by the error." The exceptionally quick and positive response by Columbia Sportswear suggests that firms whose marketing relies on a progressive, green image are open to reasonable arguments favoring Boycott,Divestment and Sanctions against the occupation. For added interest, Gert Boyle, the Founder of Columbia Sportswear, is a Holocaust Survivor and is alive and well! – Joel Beinin

On Nov. 30th, we published a post noting that Columbia Sportswear, a Portland-based manufacturer of fairly high-end outerwear, was running ads in The Jerusalem Post and Makor Rishon touting the value of their jackets "for active work in various regions, including outposts." The post was picked up and republished the same day by Adam Horowitz of Mondoweiss.

This morning (December 4 2009,) Ron Parham of Columbia Sportswear left this message, promising to discontinue the ads

Thank you and your readers for bringing this advertisement to our attention and for voicing your concerns to us via this site and numerous e-mails.We investigated and determined that neither the original Hebrew text of the ad created by our independent Israeli distributor, nor the erroneous English translation supplied by the newspaper, was submitted to or approved by Columbia Sportswear as called for by our standard practices. Columbia Sportswear and our Israeli distributor have agreed to immediately and permanently discontinue the ad, as well as to reinforce our standard pre-approval practices pertaining to all marketing materials in order to avoid such unfortunate errors in the future. We take all customer feedback seriously and sincerely regret the offense inadvertently created by this ad.

I checked and the ads in both this morning's Jerusalem Post and Makor Rishon no longer mention the outposts (I'll put the scans up on Sunday.)Big deal? I'm not sure. Helena Cobban thinks it is Some people might consider this to be a trivial issue. But the "normalization" of the whole idea of Israeli settlements and settlement-building– let alone the whole idea of the "outposts" that even the Israeli government considers to be illegal– is by no means trivial to the Palestinians, or to the causes of justice or peacemaking. I think the bottom line is that when you see a grave wrong being committed in the world, speak your conscience. Your voice– my voice– any of our voices–can indeed make a difference. You never know what a difference your voice, or my voice, can make. What you do know, is that if you remain silent, then your silence may well be understood as complicity in the wrong that's being committed.

UPDATE: Adam Horowitz at Mondoweiss has more details on the grassroots pressure Columbia Sportswear encountered over the past few days.

Sunday, December 6, 2009

One of the fault lines opening up in recent years in Israel in the formerly sweeping and solid public support for the military is a growing disaffection with military salaries, military pensions and financial perks for officers and ex-officers.

A symptom and a benchmark of the extreme militarization of state in Israel, the national security budget, by far the largest one allocated to any government ministry in Israel, is not open to detailed examination by elected representatives. Israel's law makers, the people supposedly in charge of dispensing funds to the various ministries for implementation of their policies, are not privy to a transparent breakdown of the security budget, ostensibly due to security risks. Then, following its non-transparent and thus partly fictitious approval by Israel's parliament, actual execution of the budget by the Ministry of Defense (mostly via the army) is only partly open to monitoring by the relevant state officials.

The item (sloppily translated) below, from the Haaretz financial section "The Marker" recounts the recent discovery of an instance of rule-bending to ensure a lavish pension for an ex-top-officer. Much more significantly, however, it reports that quite recently, "the Defense Ministry's accountant, Tzahi Malah, was authorized for the first time ever to examine IDF [Israel Defense Force] salaries. Malah subsequently began an inspection, during which he became suspicious at an early point that there were irregularities." At this point, however, his inspection "was brought to an abrupt halt" and the army has subsequently continued to block the inspection by 'making difficulties'.

"It appears," financial journalist Meirav Arlosoroff concluded, "that there is no one who can bring the IDF to disclose its data. The ministry in charge of supervising the army, the Defense Ministry, has … given up on the desire to clash with the IDF [… and] leaves such battles to … its accountant, who is a Finance Ministry official … [with] no power to force the IDF to disclose the data …"

Notably, the US, a major donor to Israel's defense budget, doesn't seem to expect transparency or controls against corruption at the receiving end, either at the level of government or at that of the military.

As revealing as this incident is, however, regarding the question of who, exactly, is governing Israel—the army or elected representatives—I believe, at this point, that the investigative initiative itself and the ensuing media coverage may in fact be more important. They are evidence of emerging failures in the army's grip on civil society and on state resources.

One such "resource" on which the army's hold has been weakening consistently over recent years is the annual cohort of 18-year-old prospective conscripts. Less and less of these young people are in fact complying with conscription law. The relentless statistics recently led the Chief of Staff to confront a hall full of high school principals with a proposition for "national service" for all, in a bid to retain the army's "first choice" of candidates (for Hebrew report on this event see: http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/spages/1132151.html; also see in Hebrew: http://www.nrg.co.il/online/1/ART1/973/614.html, for details on the police gagging of New Profile activists protesting the intensified militarization of high schools, outside the hall).

This weakening grip is not an inevitably linear or one-way process, though. As exemplified by the recent step-up of military intervention in Israel's high schools and the new "national service" proposal, the military and much of the ruling elite that it helps keep in power continue 'making difficulties' to obstruct and reverse the process. It is up to the organizations and the people of civil society in Israel to keep it going, to end militarization.

The Israel Defense Forces chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, has a monthly salary of NIS 68,060; a major general makes NIS 48,265 a month; and a brigadier general makes NIS 39,340 a month. The average monthly salary in Israel is close to NIS 8,000. While questions are occasionally raised as to the disparity between these sums, it appears that there are other potentially highly inflammatory data about military wages that the army is hiding.

This week, The Marker revealed that MK Nahman Shai will receive the pension of a brigadier general for his whole life, after only having held the rank for less than three years (as head of the IDF Spokespersons' Unit), despite the fact that to receive such a salary, an officer needs to have served at the rank for more than three years. In order to enable the Kadima lawmaker to receive the lavish pension, valued at an estimated NIS 3 million, the Israel Defense Forces arranged for Shai to take an unpaid vacation for almost five years - which enabled him to buy a huge pension at the expense of the public purse, at a dirt cheap price.

Whoever questions how the IDF cooks up these shady deals regarding senior officers' leaving conditions, and how the deals are not exposed and criticized, will receive an answer immediately. The simple answer is that everything connected to the terms of military pensions remains unknown, beyond any kind of external supervision. A very senior defense establishment official described the matter as a "black box" that is at the center of a quarrel between the Finance Ministry and the IDF. This took place after the Defense Ministry's accountant, Tzahi Malah, was authorized for the first time ever to examine IDF salaries. Malah subsequently began an inspection, during which he became suspicious at an early point that there were irregularities. Apparently these were found in the way in which the army credits major generals' complementary cars as being taxed.

But Malah's inspection was brought to an abrupt halt at the very moment suspicions arose of irregularities in IDF salaries. "The Defense Ministry accountant began the check, which raised suspicions of alleged salary irregularities, but the check was not completed," a defense establishment recalled. "The check has been carried sluggishly since then, due to difficulties the army has made."

"Making difficulties" is apparently an understatement for how the army simply booted Malah out, banning him from continuing to inspect salaries. Since then, the Finance Ministry's accountant general has been holding negotiations with the IDF, in an attempt to allow for the inspection to continue; in the meantime, the talks have been fruitless.

The fact that the army's system for wage payments is beyond the supervision of the Defense Ministry's accountant sparks considerable dismay. In complete contrast to this, the accountant can check every other payment made in the Defense Ministry - payments that are made through the Enterprise Resource Planning system, to which the accountant has access.

The IDF's payment system, however, is not included in the ministry's ERP software, a situation for which the army has many reasons. "The IDF's wages system was built many years ago; the IDF has no motivation for joining the ERP system, and this upgrade is being currently examined within budgetary limits," the IDF relayed. These excuses do not cover the fact that the accountant in the Defense Ministry is blind as far as military salaries are concerned. He reports on a monthly basis on the data the army gives him, but he has no direct access to the system from which this comes.

Not only does Malah have no direct access, but when suspicions are raised as to problems in the system, the army "makes difficulties" until the end of the inspections. There is a culture of cooperation in the Defense Ministry with the in-house accountant (despite the mistakes made during the Paris Air Show). But this culture is completely non-existent in the IDF, it appears.

What will bring the IDF to disclose the data?

It is reasonable to assume that whoever makes difficulties and whoever refuses to cooperate with inspections apparently has something he wants to hide. However, it is impossible to know how much he has that he wishes to hide while the IDF's salary date is not disclosed.

But it appears that there is no one who can bring the IDF to disclose its data. The ministry in charge of supervising the army, the Defense Ministry, has shirked the responsibility and given up on the desire to clash with the IDF on the matter. The ministry leaves such battles to be fought by its accountant, who is a Finance Ministry official - and everyone is comfortable with the Treasury waging wars.

The Finance Ministry, however, has no power to force the IDF to disclose the data; this is wielded only by the political establishment. In Israel's leadership, as is widely know, the futures of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak depend on one another; therefore, it is doubtful whether a politician can be found who will force Barak to make such a disclosure.

The IDF says in response that it "operates with full transparency and cooperates with the Defense Ministry and income tax in everything connected to the issue of wages. Salary data is transferred automatically to the Defense Ministry and the Finance Ministry accountant at the Defense Ministry every month.

"In the IDF, inspections are carried out by income tax auditors, and all of their recommendations are fully implemented. An Inspection by the Defense Ministry accountant has recently been held in the IDF, and in these days there is another check by income tax [auditors] has begun; both inspections have been carried out with full cooperation by the IDF."

Friday, December 4, 2009

This past April, the Israeli police raided the homes of and detained and interrogated several activists with New Profile, the Israeli organization dedicated to demilitarizing Israeli society, in an effort to paint New Profile's support of draft resisters and military refusers with the brush of criminality. New Profile has just reported some good news: the criminal investigation into their work has been officially closed, with no charges filed. As you will see in this new report from New Profile, below, they still face additional uncertainty in the form of an organized effort to remove their nonprofit status, which would effectively bar the funding of their work.

The letter below offers an update on New Profile as well as several other ongoing targets of the "heightened government repression of opposition and legitimate political discourse," as New Profile activists explain it. They say that the prosecution of their organization is "a single manifestation of the overall, ongoing harassment of citizens who dare to question government and military procedures or suggest alternative options," and note that "[re]pressive measures are directed, most pronouncedly, at Palestinians living in the occupied territories—including the Gaza Strip, to which Israel continues to apply its lethal siege—but also at dissenting Palestinian citizens of Israel, dissenting Jewish Israelis and international peace workers." This letter, like the ones before it, contains updates on other targets of Israeli government repression, including Mohammad Othman, Ezra Nawi, and Anarchists Against the Wall. Each update contains a link which you can follow for more informationand to take action in support of these activists and their right to actively oppose Israeli policies.

This time, for a change, we're bringing you (at least some) good news.

As you may recall, this past year New Profile faced a two pronged attempt to forcefully silence and suppress our work towards demilitarizing state and society in Israel. First, in the spring of 2008, a right-wing nonprofit petitioned the High Court of Justice to order the authority in charge to cancel New Profile's nonprofit status, which would have effectively blocked our access to funding. Then, in September 2008, the State Prosecutor's Office announced a criminal investigation of New Profile, followed, in April 2009, by a highly publicized and dramatized police "raid," during which eleven activists were summoned and held for interrogation.

Many thousands of you responded to our call for support, distributed and backed up throughout the world by sister-organizations and individuals. You demonstrated, wrote protest letters to Israel's authorities while expressing and extending your support for us in many thoughtful and inventive ways. This period has been an exceedingly trying one for all of us and your steady, visible support has been a lifeline. We can't thank you enough.

Now for the good news:

On November 1, 2009, the State Prosecutor's Office finally notified the High Court of Justice that it was terminating the criminal investigation of New Profile with no charges whatsoever, due to lack of culpability and lack of evidence. Following the closure of the criminal investigation, the outstanding issue of New Profile's non-profit status has now been returned to the jurisdiction and discretion of the official in charge of registering and monitoring all nonprofits in Israel (the Fellowship of Societies Registrar). Based on the (non-)findings of the criminal investigation, attorneys Gaby Lasky and Smadar Ben-Natan, the lawyers steadfastly and impressively representing New Profile, filed an immediate request that the High Court reject outright the still outstanding petition against New Profile. On November 23 2009, the High Court judge announced his decision to await the Registrar's response. Accordingly, at this point, a final decision on New Profile's nonprofit status isstill pending and the movement may still find itself effectively stripped of a legal funding channel.

Nevertheless, we are greatly relieved by the termination without charges of the criminal investigation and by its clear vindication of New Profile as operating within the law. This does not, however, detract from the complex aftermath of the experience, in particular for those of us whose homes were searched by police, whose personal computers and other materials were confiscated, who were escorted or summoned to police headquarters for interrogation, fingerprinting, etc.

As we've clarified in previous updates, New Profile's persecution, its attempted stigmatization and the implied accusations of high treason conveyed by the highly dramatized criminal investigation, all form parts of a consistent fabric, rather than an isolated incident. The persecution of New Profile is but one instance of the heightened government repression of opposition and legitimate political discourse. It is a single manifestation of the overall, ongoing harassment of citizens who dare to question government and military procedures or suggest alternative options. Repressive measures are directed, most pronouncedly, at Palestinians living in the occupied territories—including the Gaza Strip, to which Israel continues to apply its lethal siege—but also at dissenting Palestinian citizens of Israel, dissenting Jewish Israelis and international peace workers.

While predominantly dedicated to Israel's actions in Gaza earlier this year, and clearly indicating that these were in violation of international humanitarian law, the recent report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, headed by renowned jurist Richard Goldstone, also noted the suppression of dissent inside Israel. The report documented the systematic state abuse of power via the legal system and police force aimed at silencing protest. Many peaceful protesters, the report said, were detained pending trial, presented as gravely endangering the public, and charged with serious offenses rather than the relatively minor misdemeanors previously customary in such cases. The report expressly cited the persecution of New Profile (www.newprofile.org) and Breaking the Silence (www.shovrimshtika.org/index_e.asp) while emphasizing both the crucial importance of critical discourse in Israel and its systematic suppression (see:http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/specialsession/9/docs/UNFFMGC_Report.pdf).

In our updates over the past year, we have listed many instances of this state campaign of repression. Here is a brief follow-up on some of them:

1) Ezra Nawi has been sanctioned by the court—allegedly for assaulting a police officer, but in fact for working non-violently to resist the dispossession of Palestinians in the South Hebron Hills; last month he was both fined and sentenced to a month in prison (see: www.supportezra.net) .

3) Anarchists Against the Wall have been facing increased "legal" persecution, jail sentences and physical attacks by the military and police over recent months. Statistics on the number of activists indicted and standing trial—many on charges similar to the above—are available on their website (see: www.awalls.org) "and still counting". Yet persevering, Palestinian, Jewish and international activists continue to hold non-violent protests every week in the villages of Bi'ilin, Ma'asara, and Ni'ilin. More recently, activist Matan Cohen, 22, who was shot in the eye by Israel's Border Police in 2006, lost the lawsuit he had filed against the state. Moreover, the court ruling instructed that he pay the sum of 50,000 NIS ($13,500.00).

4) The Shminstim, a group of Israeli teenagers declaring their refusal to serve the occupation, some of whom face incarceration for their beliefs, are now receiving jail sentences. As we write this letter, Conscientious Objector Or Ben-David is serving one more of the successive two to four week prison terms that the army usually metes out to these young refusers (see: www.shminstim.com).

And in an additional, exemplary case:

5) Mohammad Othman, a Palestinian human rights activist, is currently being transferred to so-called "administrative detention", amounting to detention for an indefinite period on unpublicized suspicions, without charges or trial, following 61 days of detention and harsh interrogation by Israeli authorities, after returning to the West Bank from a human rights advocacy trip to Norway (see, for instance:http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/publish/article_1237.shtml).

We wish to point out that the attempt to criminalize New Profile and the distinctly stepped up drive to silence and stop active dissent in Israel seem to suggest that the authorities are seriously worried about a growing opposition. The surface of Israeli society as we know it seems to be cracking open. A current intensive government campaign to convince young eighteen-year-olds to comply with conscription law and enlist (see for instance:http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1128737.html) is, apparently, just one more piece of evidence that the hold of entrenched mindsets and habits is weakening.

Each of you is crucial to this ongoing process, wherever you are; spreading critical analyses and information, engaging, offering and inventing support in various ways.

New Profile's website features continuous updates on imprisoned Conscientious Objectors (www.newprofile.org/english) and how to support them as well as other New Profile activities. Our listserve provides daily updates in English on occupation, resistance, and Israeli militarization (subscribe via our English homepage, at the bottom right corner: http://www.newprofile.org/english/).

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Cecilie Surasky provides background information to a letter written by Judith Butler, Ronnie Gilbert and Aurora Levins Morales in response to further efforts by the San Francico Jewish Federation to decide which Jews have the right to speak, and which ones should be silenced.Racheli Gai.

Cecilie Surasky: Will the Jewish Federation of San Francisco drive more people into the arms of BDS (boycotts, divestment and sanction)? Judith Butler, Ronnie Gilbert and Aurora Levins Morales respond

Nov. 16, 2009

Here is an embarrassingly McCarthyite response to the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival's decision to a) screen the film Rachel by Jewish-Israeli filmmaker Simone Bitton, b) invite Cindy Corrie to speak and c) ask Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and the American Friends Service Committee to co-sponsor (as they have for many years).

A full-page ad complete with billowing Israeli flag and blue skies appeared this week in the San Francisco Bay Area's Jewish newspaper, J, urging the SF Jewish Federation to pass this resolution at their November 19, 2009 board meeting:

"The S.F. Jewish Federation will not support events or organizations that demonize or defame Israel. Nor will it support organizations that partner in their events with individuals or groups that call for boycotts, divestment or sanctions (BDS) against Israel."

Exemplifying the disproportionate role that big money plays in the institutional Jewish world, the first signer in a list of 36 is real estate investor Sanford Diller, know for his record-breaking$35 million donation to The University of California at San Francisco (UCSF). He is also a funder of well-known Islamophobe, Daniel Pipes, the Taube/Diller distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. Diller signed a prior letter in the J which he and another real estate investor, Israel 21C chair Zvi Alon, and the Hoover Institute's Abraham Sofaer, claimed the right to determine who, essentially, is Jewish and who is not.

This is a remarkable resolution which may very well pass, even though clearly none of its authors have stopped to consider its implications. The resolution would bar Jewish Federation funding recipients from partnering not just with groups, but with individuals, who support any form of boycotts, divestment or sanctions.

Given its vague wording, if the Jewish Community Center or a campus Hillel invites anyone from Adrienne Rich to Joe Klein to Howard Zinn or Naomi Klein, or any number of Jewish and Palestinian Israelis to speak, they will lose Federation funding. It means the Jewish Film Festival can't show any more Yes Men or Udi Aloni films. And it certainly will categorically bar countless Palestinians from ever setting foot on the stage of a Bay Area Jewish institution, lest that institution lose its funding.

In July, the ($400 million) Koret-Taube foundations wrote this error-riddled missive critical of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival:

"It is partnering with Jewish Voice for Peace and the American Friends Service Committee, two virulently anti-Israel, anti-Semitic groups that support boycotts, divestment, and sanctions against Israel. Both are closely associated with the International Solidarity Movement and other groups that aid and abet terror against the Jewish State. These groups cross the line for inclusion in the Jewish community. "In a different statement, billionaire investor Warren Hellman also said the Federation would pressure the film festival to adopt new policies regarding co-presenters and guests.

So far the festival has lost 5 board members and tens of thousands of dollars in funding.

Emblematic of how the battle lines are being drawn, 3 major Jewish thinkers and artists have responded to these efforts. Judith Butler is a true academic rock star, one of the world's sharpest thinkers on gender, power and identity. A grand dame of political folk music, Ronnie Gilbert is something of an expert on McCarthyism: she was blacklisted, along with Pete Seeger, when they were part of the bestselling singing group, The Weavers. And finally, Aurora Levins Morales, who is Latina and Jewish, is one of the most artful and wise voices anywhere on plural identities in the Jewish world. They also happen to be on the Advisory Board of Jewish Voice for Peace (sponsors of Muzzlewatch), the Jewish group that is the primary target of these efforts to ban Jews (and Quakers) from the community.

Jewish Voice for Peace advisory board members respond to efforts by the San Francisco Jewish Community Federation and others to police acceptable forms of Jewish identity and cultural expression.

By Judith Butler, Ronnie Gilbert and Aurora Levins Morales

"The San Francisco Jewish Community Federation ran an ad entitled "Setting the Record Straight" in the October 16 edition of j. the Jewish news weekly of Northern California. The next week, j. printed another op-ed entitled "To heal post-'Rachel' rift, Federation needs a new policy." As members of the Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) Advisory Board, we must respond to both of these statements.

Like the Federation, we value the contributions of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival over the past 29 years. JVP has been proud to support the Festival by co-presenting several films in recent years. The Festival has been an important cultural force in the Bay Area Jewish community precisely because of its commitment to presenting a wide variety of ideas and perspectives and its willingness to explore controversial issues. As such, it is critical that the Festival's programming choices not be subject to undue pressure from funders.

We are therefore dismayed that the Federation is attempting to put constraints on the Festival's choice of speakers and co-presenters, in order to stop them from choosing Jewish Voice for Peace and the pacifist Quaker group, the American Friends Service Committee, as co-presenters in the future.

Furthermore, in the October 23 j. op-ed, three individuals set themselves up as a Jewish community version of the House Un-American Activities Committee, demanding a blacklist for alleged "anti-Israel" organizations.

Jewish Voice for Peace is an organization of Jews working for peace, security, justice, and human rights for both Israelis and Palestinians. We believe that ending the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is the only way to achieve a just peace and is in the best interests of Israelis and Jews everywhere. These beliefs are shared by thousands of Bay Area Jews, and hundreds of thousands of Jews across the U.S and around the globe. It is unacceptable for the Federation, an organization that claims to promote "mutual respect and accommodation of diversity within Jewish life," to attempt to shut out our organization and the large and growing segment of the Bay Area Jewish community that JVP represents.

Netanyahu has thumbed his nose at Obama's request for a settlement freeze, and his foreign minister, a West Bank settler, refuses to participate in the peace process. It is not realistic to expect this government to make any meaningful moves toward peace without outside pressure. The boycott/divestment/sanctions movement (BDS) encompasses a variety of tactics and targets, and people of good will do disagree about their use. We at JVP are not of one mind about this movement. But we all agree that boycott/divestment/sanctions is a non-violent approach to applying pressure on the Israeli government. And we believe that no one should be demonized for using nonviolent forms of protest in the effort to change policy, especially policy as deadly serious as this.

For too long, our community institutions such as the Federation have remained silent in the face of ever-growing Israeli settlement expansion, human rights abuses and other policies which have created major obstacles to peace. For too long, their "support for Israel" has in practice meant tacit support for policies that undermine the cause of peace and security, endangering both Israelis and Palestinians.JVP's 90,000 supporters include countless individuals of all ages who play vital roles in upholding and strengthening a diverse and dynamic Jewish community through their participation in religious life, culture, academia and politics. And our numbers are growing. We reject this attempt to isolate and silence the growing number of U.S. Jews who see our work as an important expression of Jewish values. We invite members of the Jewish community who believe in full equality for all people to join us. We urge all those who disagree with our beliefs or our tactics to recognize that ethical debate is part of our tradition, and to embrace the full breadth and diversity of Jewish identity, thinking and expression. Finally, we invite all Jews, whether or not you agree with us, to defend freedom of expression in our community as an essential part of any lasting solution."

Judith Butler is Professor of Comparative Literature and Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley.

Ronnie Gilbert is an American folk singer and writer, and was a member of the singing group the Weavers with Pete Seeger. The Weavers were blacklisted in the 50s.

Aurora Levins Morales is a poet, essayist, community historian and activist.

A small number of wealthy machers can use their economic clout to try to determine Jewish morality, but in the end they will fail, and they will have no one to blame but themselves. This McCarthyite behavior is exactly what radicalizes Jews, young and old alike, and send us screaming into the arms of the comparatively more thoughtful, moral and nuanced promoters of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions.When institutional Jewry's so-called leaders stand so brazenly against the entire human rights world, as they have time and time again; when they plug their ears while singing "nah nah nah nah" as more and more land and lives are taken; when they fight every mild effort to get Israel to stop its settlement expansion and repression of Palestinians and, increasingly, Israeli human rights activists, what exactly do they expect?That good, decent, compassionate people who care deeply about equality and justice for both Palestinians and Israelis, will shut up and go away? No, we will escalate our nonviolent methods.You, Jewish leaders, have left us no choice. You started the BDS movement. Only you can stop it. Trying to ban free speech and free thought; trying to ignore Israel's continued egregious violations of human rights and its march towards the right; trying to fight any and all forms of criticism and truth-telling only sends more people to the other side. When will you understand that? Instead, consider choosing to build a world in which both Palestinians and Israelis have the same rights and opportunities. That would be, without doubt, good for the Jews.-Cecilie SuraskyJewish Voice for Peace, Muzzlewatch

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Ali Abunimah is a prominent defender of a single democratic state in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. In this article he makes the now quite common – though also controversial – comparison with Apartheid South Africa. Usually the question this comparison raises is whether Israeli treatment of Palestinians is really analogous to or as bad as the Apartheid regime's treatment of its black majority, and the comparison is often used to support the use of tactics of resistance like BDS modeled on the anti-Apartheid campaigns of the 1980s. But Abunimah instead hones narrowly in on the hostility of the white minority in South Africa to a multi-racial democratic state, a hostility that persisted until surprisingly shortly before change was initiated. It is this that he compares, in a wealth of detail, with Jewish Israeli fears of a single state solution. If change could occur in South Africa in spite of such widespread rejection in the white community, why, Abuminahargues, should change not occur in Israel despite the fears of the Jewish community? It won't happen, he recognizes without outside pressure (and he supports BDS); but current Jewish Israeli rejection need not make it impossible.

This is surely true, but 'not necessarily impossible' is very far from showing that a one-state solution ought to be the aspiration of activist movements, Palestinian, Jewish or otherwise. As his banner quotation from Shimon Peres – a barely veiled threat – makes clear, it remains quite possible that a one-state 'solution' will involve no diminution of violence towards or oppression of Palestinians. One state is, after all, what there is now. What might make it important to explore a one state possibility is the fact, clearly motivating Abunimah, that two viable states are now impossible. Certainly he is correct to say that there is presently no political will in the Israeli or US administrations to move in the direction of a viable Palestinian state and reasonable opinions can differ on whether the current 'facts on the ground' make it impossible to eke out such a state. But it is also surely true that activist pressure can be brought to bear both on that politicalwill and even on the facts on the ground and this pressure has a natural point of application in the official commitment of Israel, the US, the PA (and even Hamas) to two states. If change is possible, as Abunimah argues, on the one state solution, then it is certainly possible for two states. But if two states can be achieved, then this removes a big chunk of the motivation for directing one's energies to one state. Indeed, aiming for two viable states in the medium term is not inconsistent with seeking to build consensus, along the lines Abunimah suggests, for single state in the long term.

The question is by no means an obvious one to resolve, but it is important to consider where activist energies are most likely to have an effect, and avoid directions that absorb energy with little hope of result. Indeed some commentators have suggested that the one state solution has become increasingly acceptable in the mainstream US media precisely because it is so unlikely to come about that it represents – from the point of view of the status quo – a harmless safety valve through which to discharge otherwise potentially dangerous activist pressure. Alistair Welchman

Anyone who rejects the two-state solution, won't bring a one-state solution. They will instead bring one war, not one state. A bloody war with no end. -- Israeli President Shimon Peres, 7 November 2009.

One of the most commonly voiced objections to a one-state solution for Palestine/Israel stems from the accurate observation that the vast majority of Israeli Jews reject it, and fear being "swamped" by a Palestinian majority. Across the political spectrum, Israeli Jews insist on maintaining a separate Jewish-majority state.

But with the total collapse of the Obama Administration's peace efforts, and relentless Israeli colonization of the occupied West Bank, the reality is dawning rapidly that the two-state solution is no more than a slogan that has no chance of being implemented or altering the reality of a de facto binational state in Palestine/Israel.

This places an obligation on all who care about the future of Palestine/Israel to seriously consider the democratic alternatives. I have long argued that the systems in post-apartheid South Africa (a unitary democratic state), and Northern Ireland (consociational democracy) -- offer hopeful, real-life models.

But does solid Israeli Jewish opposition to a one-state solution mean that a peaceful one-state outcome is so unlikely that Palestinians should not pursue it, and should instead focus only on "pragmatic" solutions that would be less fiercely resisted by Israeli Jews?

The experience in South Africa suggests otherwise. In 1994, white-minority rule -- apartheid -- came to a peaceful, negotiated end, and was replaced (after a transitional period of power-sharing) with a unitary democratic state with a one person, one vote system. Before this happened, how likely did this outcome look? Was there any significant constituency of whites prepared to contemplate it, and what if the African National Congress (ANC) had only advanced political solutions that whites told pollsters they would accept?

Until close to the end of apartheid, the vast majority of whites, including many of the system's liberal critics, completely rejected a one person, one vote system, predicting that any attempt to impose it would lead to a bloodbath. As late as 1989, F.W. de Klerk, South Africa's last apartheid president, described a one person, one vote system as the "death knell" for South Africa.

A 1988 study by political scientist Pierre Hugo documented the widespread fears among South African whites that a transition to majority rule would entail not only a loss of political power and socioeconomic status, but engendered "physical dread" and fear of "violence, total collapse, expulsion and flight." Successive surveys showed that four out of five whites thought that majority rule would threaten their "physical safety." Such fears were frequently heightened by common racist tropes of inherently savage and violent Africans, but the departure of more than a million white colons from Algeria and the airlifting of 300,000 whites from Angola during decolonization set terrifying precedents ("Towards darkness and death: racial demonology in South Africa," The Journal of Modern African Studies, 26(4), 1988).

Throughout the 1980s, polls showed that even as whites increasingly understood that apartheid could not last, only a small minority ever supported majority rule and a one person, one vote system. In a March 1986 survey, for example, 47 percent of whites said they would favor some form of "mixed-race" government, but 83 percent said they would opt for continued white domination of the government if they had the choice (Peter Goodspeed, "Afrikaners cling to their all-white dream," The Toronto Star, 5 October 1986).

A 1990 nationwide survey of Afrikaner whites (native speakers of Afrikaans, as opposed to English, and who traditionally formed the backbone of the apartheid state), found just 2.2 percent were willing to accept a "universal franchise with majority rule" (Kate Manzo and Pat McGowan, "Afrikaner fears and the politics of despair: Understanding change in South Africa," International Studies Quarterly, 36, 1992).

Perhaps an enlightened white elite was able to lead the white masses to higher ground? This was not the case either. A 1988 academic survey of more than 400 white politicians, business and media leaders, top civil servants, academics and clergy found that just 4.8 percent were prepared to accept a unitary state with a universal voting franchise and two-thirds considered such an outcome "unacceptable." According to Manzo and McGowan, white elites reflected the sentiments and biases of the rest of the society and overwhelmingly considered whites inherently more civilized and culturally superior to black Africans. Just more than half of prominent whites were prepared to accept "a federal state in which power is shared between white and non-white groups and areas so that no one group dominates."

During the 1980s, the white electorate in South Africa moved to the right, as Israel's Jewish electorate is doing today. Support seeped from the National Party, which had established formal apartheid in 1948, to the even more extreme Conservative Party. Yet, "on the issue of majority rule," Hugo observed, "supporters of the National Party and the Conservative Party, as well as most white voters to the 'left' of these organizations, ha[d] little quarrel with each other."

The vast majority of whites, wracked with existential fears, were simply unable to contemplate relinquishing effective control, or at least a veto, over political decision-making in South Africa.

Yet, the African National Congress insisted firmly on a one person, one vote system with no white veto. As the township protests and strikes and international pressure mounted, The Economist observed in an extensive 1986 survey of South Africa published on 1 February of that year, that many "enlightened" whites "still fondly argue that a dramatic improvement in the quality of black life may take the revolutionary sting out of the black townships -- and persuade 'responsible' blacks, led by the emergent black middle class, to accept some power-sharing formula."

Schemes to stabilize the apartheid system abounded, and bear a strong resemblance to the current Israeli government's vision of "economic peace" in which a collaborationist Palestinian Authority leadership would manage a still-subjugated Palestinian population anesthetized by consumer goods and shopping malls.

Because of the staunch opposition of whites to a unitary democratic state, the ANC heard no shortage of advice from western liberals that it should seek a "realistic" political accommodation with the apartheid regime, and that no amount of pressure could force whites to succumb to the ANC's political demands. The ANC was warned that insistence on majority rule would force Afrikaners into the "laager" -- they would retreat into a militarized garrison state and siege economy, preferring death before surrender.

Even the late Helen Suzman, one of apartheid's fiercest liberal critics, predicted in 1987, as quoted by Hugo, "The Zimbabwe conflict took 15 years ... and cost 20,000 lives and I can assure you that the South African transfer of power will take a good deal more than that, both in time and I am afraid lives."

But as The Economist observed, the view that whites would prefer "collective suicide" was something of a caricature. The vast majority of Afrikaners were "no longer bible-thumping boers." They were "part of a spoilt, affluent suburban society, whose economic pain threshold may prove to be rather low."

The Economist concluded that if whites would only come so far voluntarily, then it was perfectly reasonable for the anti-apartheid movement to bring them the rest of the way through "coercion" in the form of sanctions and other forms of pressure. "The quicker the white tribe submits," the magazine wrote, "the better its chance of a bearable future in a black-ruled South Africa."

Ultimately, as we now know, the combination of internal resistance and international isolation did force whites to abandon political apartheid and accept majority rule. However, it is important to note that the combined strength of the anti-apartheid movement never seriously threatened the physical integrity of the white regime.

Even after the massive township uprisings of 1985-86, the South African regime was secure. "So far there is no real physical threat to white power," The Economist noted, "so far there is little threat to white lives. ... The white state is mighty, and well-equipped. It has the capacity to repress the township revolts far more bloodily. The blacks have virtually no urban or rural guerrilla capacity, practically no guns, few safe havens within South Africa or without."

This balance never changed, and a similar equation could be written today about the relative power of a massively-armed -- and much more ruthless -- Israeli state, and lightly armed Palestinian resistance factions.

What did change for South Africa, and what all the weapons in the world were not able to prevent, was the complete loss of legitimacy of the apartheid regime and its practices. Once this legitimacy was gone, whites lost the will to maintain a system that relied on repression and violence and rendered them international pariahs; they negotiated a way out and lived to tell the tale. It all happened much more quickly and with considerably less violence than even the most optimistic predictions of the time. But this outcome could not have been predicted based on what whites said they were willing to accept, and it would not have occurred had the ANC been guided by opinion polls rather than the democratic principles of the Freedom Charter.

Zionism -- as many Israelis openly worry -- is suffering a similar, terminal loss of legitimacy as Israel is ever more isolated as a result of its actions. Israel's self-image as a liberal "Jewish and democratic state" is proving impossible to maintain against the reality of a militarized, ultra-nationalist Jewish sectarian settler-colony that must carry out frequent and escalating massacres of "enemy" civilians (Lebanon and Gaza 2006, Gaza 2009) in a losing effort to check the resistance of the region's indigenous people. Zionism cannot bomb, kidnap, assassinate, expel, demolish, settle and lie its way to legitimacy and acceptance.

Already difficult to disguise, the loss of legitimacy becomes impossible to conceal once Palestinians are a demographic majority ruled by a Jewish minority. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's demand that Palestinians recognize Israel's "right to exist as a Jewish state" is in effect an acknowledgement of failure: without Palestinian consent, something which is unlikely ever to be granted, the Zionist project of a Jewish ethnocracy in Palestine has grim long-term prospects.

Similarly, South African whites typically attempted to justify their opposition to democracy, not in terms of a desire to preserve their privilege and power, but using liberal arguments about protecting distinctive cultural differences. Hendrik Verwoerd Jr., the son of assassinated Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd, apartheid's founder, expressed the problem in these terms in 1986, as reported by The Toronto Star, stating that, "These two people, the Afrikaner and the black, are not capable of becoming one nation. Our differences are unique, cultural and deep. The only way a man can be happy, can live in peace, is really when he is among his own people, when he shares cultural values."

The younger Verwoerd was on the far-right of South African politics, leading a quixotic effort to carve out a whites-only homeland in the heart of South Africa. But his reasoning sounds remarkably similar to liberal Zionist defenses of the "two-state solution" today. The Economist clarified the use of such language at the time, stating that "One of the weirder products of apartheid is the crippling of language in a maw of hypocrisy, euphemism and sociologese. You talk about the Afrikaner 'right to self-determination' -- meaning power over everybody else."

Zionism's claim for "Jewish self-determination" amidst an intermixed population, is in effect a demand to preserve and legitimize a status quo in which Israeli Jews exercise power in perpetuity. But there's little reason to expect that Israeli Jews would abandon this quest voluntarily any more than South African whites did. As in South Africa, coercion is necessary -- and the growing boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement is one of the most powerful, nonviolent, legitimate and proven tools of coercion that Palestinians possess. Israel's vulnerabilities may be different from those of apartheid South Africa, but Israel is not invulnerable to pressure.

Coercion is not enough, however; as I have long argued, and sought to do, Palestinians must also put forward a positive vision. Neither can Palestinians advocating a one-state solution simply disregard the views of Israeli Jews. We must recognize that the opposition of Israeli Jews to any solution that threatens their power and privilege stems from at least two sources. One is irrational, racist fears of black and brown hordes (in this case, Arab Muslims) stoked by decades of colonial, racist demonization. The other source -- certainly heightened by the former -- are normal human concerns about personal and family dislocation, loss of socioeconomic status and community security: change is scary.

But change will come. Without indulging Israeli racism or preserving undue privilege, the legitimate concerns of ordinary Israeli Jews can be addressed directly in any negotiated transition to ensure that the shift to democracy is orderly, and essential redistributive policies are carried out fairly. Inevitably, decolonization will cause some pain as Israeli Jews lose power and privilege, but there are few reasons to believe it cannot be a well-managed process, or that the vast majority of Israeli Jews, like white South Africans, would not be prepared to make the adjustment for the sake of a normality and legitimacy they cannot have any other way.

This is where the wealth of research and real-life experience about the successes, failures, difficulties and opportunities of managing such transitions at the level of national and local politics, neighborhoods, schools and universities, workplaces, state institutions and policing, emerging from South Africa and Northern Ireland, will be of enormous value.

Every situation has unique features, and although there are patterns in history, it never repeats itself exactly. But what we can conclude from studying the pasts and presents of others is that Palestinians and Israelis are no less capable of writing themselves a post-colonial future that gives everyone a chance at a life worth living in a single, democratic state.

Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah is author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.